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Articles 1 - 30 of 31
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Non-Empirical Modelling And Theorizing: Scientific Progress In Particle Physics, Cristin Cain Chall
Non-Empirical Modelling And Theorizing: Scientific Progress In Particle Physics, Cristin Cain Chall
Theses and Dissertations
Particle physics (and other fundamental physics research, including searches for a theory of quantum gravity) faces a problem when it comes to acquiring experimental evidence. Many theories and models make predictions that cannot be tested with current, or even prospective technology. Yet these fields continue to develop, with new models and theories regularly being introduced, scrutinized, changed, and discarded. My project aims at examining the way theories and models are constructed, adapted, and assessed in fields that lack the empirical evidence that usually grounds such tasks. I will focus on two prominent examples: string theory and attempts to explain electroweak …
Hume's Conception Of Geometry And The Role Of Contradiction, Sofia Remedios Paz
Hume's Conception Of Geometry And The Role Of Contradiction, Sofia Remedios Paz
Theses and Dissertations
David Hume’s account of geometry can seem puzzling as he claims that geometry is inexact and demonstrable. Graciela de Pierris argues for an interpretation that explains why Hume sees geometry as inexact and, yet, demonstrable. However, she doesn’t consider Hume’s description of relations of ideas found in the Enquiry. Hume distinguishes between matters of fact and relations of idea by checking to see if there is a contradiction with the denial of a proposition. Geometry is categorized as relations of idea, so the denials of geometric propositions cannot be conceivable and must imply a contradiction. I will argue that De …
A Player’S Sense Of Place: Computer Games As Anatopistic Medium, Kristopher John Purzycki
A Player’S Sense Of Place: Computer Games As Anatopistic Medium, Kristopher John Purzycki
Theses and Dissertations
This project works to understand how open-world computer games help generate a sense of place from the player. Since their development over a half century ago, computer games have primarily been discussed in terms of space. Yet the way we think about space today is much different than how those scientists calculated space as a construction of time, mass, and location. But as computer games have evolved, the language has failed to accommodate the more nuanced qualities of game spaces. This project aims at articulating the nuances of place through phenomenological methods to objectively analyze the player experience as performed …
A Pedagogy Of Techno-Social Relationality: Ethics And Digital Multimodality In The Composition Classroom, Kristin M. Ravel
A Pedagogy Of Techno-Social Relationality: Ethics And Digital Multimodality In The Composition Classroom, Kristin M. Ravel
Theses and Dissertations
I bring together the relational ethics of feminist critical theory with approaches of multimodal rhetoric to examine the ethical implications of composing on social media platforms. Most social media platforms are designed to value consumerism, efficiency, quantity of web traffic, and constant synchronous response over concerns of responsible and critical communication. I propose a rhetorical approach of techno-social relationality (TSR) as an intervention against such corporate-minded design. Through this approach, I argue that civil engagement is not limited to people’s social responsibilities but rather is entwined in complex, material-technical contexts. By considering the responsibility of our machines as much as …
Henry Of Ghent On ‘Persona’: Summa, Article 53, Question 1, Jennifer M. Gray
Henry Of Ghent On ‘Persona’: Summa, Article 53, Question 1, Jennifer M. Gray
Theses and Dissertations
In this dissertation, I shall defend the thesis that Question 1, Article 53 of his Summa represents an unexpected epistemic sensitivity in the teachings of Henry of Ghent. By this, I mean that his discussion of the persons in the Trinity hints at an awareness of certain epistemic consequences or assumptions at play in the metaphysical use of terms like person, substance, universal, and so on. This acknowledgement is unique and original among his contemporaries.
My argument establishes Henry’s position in context with the traditions he inherited by demonstrating the ways in which it is related to the problem of …
On The Criticism Of Hegelian Necessity, Rosa Turrisi Fuller
On The Criticism Of Hegelian Necessity, Rosa Turrisi Fuller
Theses and Dissertations
According to Hegel, there are no intrinsic limitations on the extent of human knowledge and reason, and one of the prerequisites of overcoming their relative limits is a logic that is capable of grasping the intrinsic contradictions in things. Hegel claims that his Logic shows that these contradictions are immanently necessary. By means of a close reexamination of Hegel’s own texts, I defend this claim against two of his most prominent nineteenth century critics, Schelling and Trendelenburg, who hope to undermine Hegelian rationalism and defend the more modest Kantian outlook. I also show that a school of interpretation that I …
Enclosures And Dichotomies: Coexistence Vs. Distance In The Poems Of John Clare, Jordan P. Finn
Enclosures And Dichotomies: Coexistence Vs. Distance In The Poems Of John Clare, Jordan P. Finn
Theses and Dissertations
John Clare’s poetry emphasizes an affinity with environment by suspending the distinction between the inside (subject) and the outside (object). Clare’s identification with objects and perception rather than subjects and aesthetics renders his work as a prescient and radical example of ecological poetry in the Romantic period. Raymond Williams’ “green language” and Timothy Morton’s ambient poetics both cite Clare as an ideal figure for their above theories and evoke Clare as a writer who positions the environment as governing thought rather than thought governing the environment. This thesis especially relates Clare to Morton’s Ecology without Nature, a study of …
Maximally Contiguous Simples, Steven Canet
Maximally Contiguous Simples, Steven Canet
Theses and Dissertations
Much of the recent work done in mereology has been focused on answers to Ned Markosian’s Simple Question: What are the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for an object’s being a simple i.e. a thing with no parts? In this paper, I analyze Markosian’s own answer, The Maximally Continuous View (MaxCon), and highlight a few of the strongest objections against that answer. I then argue that the objections only arise because Markosian assumes problematic conceptions of spacetime and matter. After updating each assumption with our best physics, I arrive at my own view, which I call the Maximally Contiguous View …
Explanation And Prediction: Strategies For Extending Scientific Realism To Mathematics, Owen Henry Forbes
Explanation And Prediction: Strategies For Extending Scientific Realism To Mathematics, Owen Henry Forbes
Theses and Dissertations
One central question in the philosophy of mathematics concerns the ontological status of mathematical entities. Platonists argue that abstract, mathematical entities exist, while nominalists argue that they do not. Scientific realism is the position that science is (roughly) true and the objects it describes exist. There are two major competing arguments for platonism on the basis of scientific realism: Indispensability and Explanation. In this paper I consider which argument the platonist ought to prefer by comparing their motivations and results. I conclude that, given the current role of mathematics in our best scientific theories, Explanation does not support platonism. Thus, …
"This Is Simply What I Do": Primitive Normativity In Following A Rule, Taojie Wang
"This Is Simply What I Do": Primitive Normativity In Following A Rule, Taojie Wang
Theses and Dissertations
In this paper I propose an account of normativity of meaning that answers the skeptical challenge against meaning which Kripke puts forward on behalf of his reading of Wittgenstein. According to Kripke (1982), the skeptic asks us to identify the fact that constitutes a language user as meaning addition, instead of some other mathematical functions, by “+”. On the view I develop, such facts are facts about a certain type of normative attitude, the primitively normative attitude, that we have as a part of our human nature.
In illustrating my account, I start with discussing a similar-sounding proposal that Hannah …
Defending A Modest Semantic Brutalism, Jean Pierre Cordero Rojas
Defending A Modest Semantic Brutalism, Jean Pierre Cordero Rojas
Theses and Dissertations
Scott Soames is a naturalist propositional realist. Propositional realism requires a commitment to propositions, propositional access, and semantic properties (namely, representationality and truth conditionality). Soames' task, as a naturalist propositional realist, is to give appropriate explanations of the entities in question in terms of a naturalist base ontology. In contrast, brutalism (of any sort) holds that some facts are brute or unexplainable in terms of some base ontology. I argue that at least one semantic fact in particular—that propositional representationality bears the property I call Tight Connection—remains unexplained even given Soames' efforts. I argue that there is no route available …
Nominalization And Interpretation: A Critique Of Global Nominalization Criteria, Jason Alen Dewitt
Nominalization And Interpretation: A Critique Of Global Nominalization Criteria, Jason Alen Dewitt
Theses and Dissertations
Nominalization is the process which removes abstract objects from our scientific theories. But what makes a proposed nominalization a good or successful one? In the paper “Is It Possible to Nominalize Quantum Mechanics,” Otávio Bueno develops criteria for any successful nominalization. In the present work, I discuss one of these criteria that I call the “interpretation criterion.” It claims that a nominalization of a scientific theory should be neutral with regards to the interpretations of that theory. I argue that the interpretation criterion is problematic, and that it should be replaced with an alternative criterion of nominalization. I first explicate …
Humean Constructivism And Deliberative Coherence, Danilo Doche Linhares
Humean Constructivism And Deliberative Coherence, Danilo Doche Linhares
Theses and Dissertations
According to Humean constructivism in metaethics, there is no incoherence in holding that different agents should act on aims that are not co-possible. I will show that this commitment undermines Humean constructivists’ own treatment of normative judgments, where these judgments are meant to function both as prescriptions and assertions of fact. When ideally coherent Humeans engage others in conversation, their claims about others’ reasons to act function as imperatives rather than as assertions; conversely, when Humean reasoners think of those claims while deliberating on their own, they carry no prescriptive weight at all. In light of these issues, I propose …
Poetics, Not Pragmatics: Understanding Metaphors In A Poetic Context, Savannah Marciezyk
Poetics, Not Pragmatics: Understanding Metaphors In A Poetic Context, Savannah Marciezyk
Theses and Dissertations
The aim of this paper is to explain why the leading theories of metaphor fail when applied to metaphors which appear in poems. The ability to understand the true meaning of a metaphor in conversations relies on understanding speaker intention and extralinguistic context. This paper argues that because such material is not available to the reader of a poem, theories which rely heavily on pragmatics to explain metaphors cannot be successfully applied to metaphors which appear in poems. This paper makes use of the views on metaphor by John Searle and Paul Grice, and discusses how meaning is constructed in …
Taking The Other To Be Itself: The Struggling Self-Consciousness’S Motivations In Hegel’S Phenomenology Of Spirit, Jordon Kent Martin
Taking The Other To Be Itself: The Struggling Self-Consciousness’S Motivations In Hegel’S Phenomenology Of Spirit, Jordon Kent Martin
Theses and Dissertations
Hegel develops an account of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit in which a self-consciousness fights another in a life-and-death struggle. There are many readings of the motivations for self-consciousness’s risking of its own life and aiming at the life of the other in the struggle. I argue that Robert Stern’s account of these motivations is problematic because he attributes more rational self-awareness to self-consciousness than it possesses at this stage in the dialectic. John McDowell’s reading presents advantages over Stern’s, but still leaves us with the problem of how to understand that self-consciousness “in the other sees its own …
Reasonableness And The Means Of Production, Dennis Moore
Reasonableness And The Means Of Production, Dennis Moore
Theses and Dissertations
Although John Rawls’s work has been incredibly influential in political philosophy, the question of how Rawls’s principles of justice would be realized in the institutions of a just society has only recently received significant attention. Stated most clearly in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Rawls discusses five regimes, only two of which are compatible with justice as fairness: liberal socialism and property-owning democracy. Rawls argues that both regime types can satisfy his principles of justice and choosing which regime to institute depends on the culture of the nation in question. In this essay, I argue that although both liberal socialism …
Philosophy Without Title: Hume's Sceptical Principles In The Treatise, John Frederick Muller
Philosophy Without Title: Hume's Sceptical Principles In The Treatise, John Frederick Muller
Theses and Dissertations
At the end of Book I of the Treatise, David Hume identifies a dilemma that has him ready to abandon philosophy. We have no choice, he suggests, between (1) a “false reason” that leads to “errors, absurdities, and obscurities,” and (2) no reason at all, a paralysis of self-doubt that ends in “total scepticism.” In the last two decades, the “Title Principle” has recast the debate around how Hume is able to continue with philosophy in the face of this dilemma. Per its proponents, the Title Principle is Hume’s “answer” to the dilemma, an articulation of the sort of reasoning …
Integrity And Its Relationship To Morality, Hyun Jeong Kang
Integrity And Its Relationship To Morality, Hyun Jeong Kang
Theses and Dissertations
Some scholars take it for granted that one’s possession of integrity has nothing to do with one’s moral quality whereas others believe that they are no doubt intertwined. Hume, for instance, holds that a person who ambitiously tries to gain a great achievement can still be a person of integrity even if he is dishonest with others. Plato’s concept of integrity can be formulated in the way that a person with morally vicious commitments has disunity in his soul and fails to possess integrity. In order to decide which side is right, I suggest that we examine the most promising …
Responsibility And Obligation In The Face Of Modern Day Slavery: The Demands On Global Citizens To Fight For Justice For Slaves, Tiffany R. Beaver
Responsibility And Obligation In The Face Of Modern Day Slavery: The Demands On Global Citizens To Fight For Justice For Slaves, Tiffany R. Beaver
Theses and Dissertations
There are likely more than 45 million slaves in the world today. Economist Kevin Bales defines slaves as people whose freedom and autonomy have been denied, who are paid nothing above subsistence, and who are maintained in these conditions through violence or the threat of violence. I am especially concerned with exploring the nature of the various relationships that everyday citizens share with these modern slaves, and establishing what, if any, obligations such citizens have to act on behalf of modern slaves.
Contemporary philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre asserts that humans are storytelling beings caught up in real stories (i.e. narrative quests) …
Tool Migration: A Framework To Study The Cross-Disciplinary Use Of Mathematical Constructs In Science, Chia-Hua Lin
Tool Migration: A Framework To Study The Cross-Disciplinary Use Of Mathematical Constructs In Science, Chia-Hua Lin
Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation is concerned with the scientific practice in which a mathematical construct that was originally developed to study a particular subject matter subsequently used in other disciplines or sub-disciplines for a different subject matter, a phenomenon that I call ‘tool migration.’ I argue that tool migration can be ‘epistemically risky.’ Specifically, uprooting a research tool from one disciplinary context and re-situating it for use in another can change how the tool is applied; whatever has made the tool useful and reliable in the first place may not have stayed the same in the new context. Using the migrations of …
Time: A Measure Of Change, Brittany A. Gentry
Time: A Measure Of Change, Brittany A. Gentry
Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines the metaphysical nature of time by drawing on literature in epistemology of measurement. Using such literature, I defend an account of time as a measure of change. I use literature on measurement to critique other metaphysical accounts of time and argue that some current metaphysical accounts of time are inadequate as accounts of time. The inadequacies we find in these accounts of time along with various other demands we have of an account of time push us further towards accepting the account of time I offer. While I defend a particular account of time, adopting that account …
“The Healing Balm Of Sympathy Denied”: Moral Sense Philosophy, Patriarchy, And Monstrosity In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Estefania Velez
“The Healing Balm Of Sympathy Denied”: Moral Sense Philosophy, Patriarchy, And Monstrosity In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Estefania Velez
Theses and Dissertations
Though Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein produces an ideology of sympathy consistent with the literary and philosophical aims of Romanticism, this essay examines Shelley’s critique of patriarchy which posits that though sympathetic companionship in Frankenstein remains an ethical necessity, it is unattainable within a social order marred by misogynist structures of power.
Archaeology Of Social Patterning, Chase Bray
Archaeology Of Social Patterning, Chase Bray
Theses and Dissertations
The episteme that created the grid as a structure for logic has been usurped. We compose meaning from an adulterated grid, or pattern. I process meaning through the abuse of acrid patterns and the grid, the reduction of imagery to silhouettes and by referencing both cultural and classical mythology.
Epic Stories: Sequence Fiction, Young Readers, And The Aesthetics Of World Building, Jordana Estelle Hall
Epic Stories: Sequence Fiction, Young Readers, And The Aesthetics Of World Building, Jordana Estelle Hall
Theses and Dissertations
This study theorizes the world building processes that sequence fiction engages within a framework of intratextual structuralism and cognitive aesthetic stage theory. The study begins with an interdisciplinary overview of fictional and possible worlds theory before proposing a structural adaptation of this lens that explains the developmental, aesthetic benefits of the genre for young readers. Chapter II is an application of the adapted lens to a canonical epic, the His Dark Materials sequence by Philip Pullman. I interpret the intentional structure of the story world across novels to discuss how these engage readers at different aesthetic milestones and encourage a …
Humans Aren't Boxes, Art Isn't Finite, Brianne Alta Humphreys
Humans Aren't Boxes, Art Isn't Finite, Brianne Alta Humphreys
Theses and Dissertations
I am bored. All around me are systems that perpetuate repetitive, reductive, and mundane modes of living. In an attempt to counter a culture obsessed with singular ways of existence and bite-sized perfection, I utilize moving mediums of video and performance to dive head first into a vast array of sloppy sincerity. The crisp, white-washed, analytical, and restrictive is loudly replaced with the empirical, haphazard, and instinctual. My intention is to create and encourage raw, performative-based work that is as multifaceted as unbridled life itself. This alive and physical practice hosts a conglomeration of sweat, memories, heartbreaks, hymn singing, line …
Lotion In Your Lungs, Raul H. De Lara
Lotion In Your Lungs, Raul H. De Lara
Theses and Dissertations
This is a document explaining in detail my artistic practice from childhood to the day I graduated VCU. It will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already felt such ways, or similar ways – words and ghosts are mostly invisible.
Nigga Is Historical: This Is Not An Invitation For White People To Say Nigga, Sandy Williams Iv
Nigga Is Historical: This Is Not An Invitation For White People To Say Nigga, Sandy Williams Iv
Theses and Dissertations
Over the past several years I have been on a quest to locate a world beyond the one I’ve been presented. I am interested in the history of atomic particles - like everything that radiates off of a monument (both literally and those things that are metaphorically reified) - invisible things, and the ways in which these things insect beyond our knowledge systems. This inquiry takes many forms. Mine is a conceptually based practice linked to record keeping and time, and the ways in which these concepts find plurality within our culture; or more pointedly, the importance that we attach …
Untitled Unknown, Taylor Simone Stewart
Untitled Unknown, Taylor Simone Stewart
Theses and Dissertations
This article is the first of a series exploring domination culture through the ways narrative has been indoctrinated as reality and weaponized as a holding cell for captives. Within this exploration, the narrative of domination is placed in relation to higher dimensional realms of the unknown; this being the before and after of domination culture. This positioning will allow for the reality of a simultaneous existence within the labyrinth of domination and a higher dimensional unknown to be framed. Within this series of articles, I question the roll of the rogue characters shamanistic agents of resisting domination, the fear of …
Lifetime, Emily E. Kuchenbecker
Lifetime, Emily E. Kuchenbecker
Theses and Dissertations
Time is my bully. Time marks the start of something, as well as the end. We are all carrying out the inexorable passing of time as it relates to our impending mortalities.
I do not fear death.
The awareness of my body’s impermanence employs me to feel that much more connected to the vessel containing that of which I am.
But what am I? Am I my body- or is it much deeper?
Through the work executed during my graduate research, I have attempted to quantify my existence through the archiving my time and body. This document ushers you through …
(And I Can't Stress This Enough) In My Mouth: Extradiegetic Affect As Material, C. Klockner
(And I Can't Stress This Enough) In My Mouth: Extradiegetic Affect As Material, C. Klockner
Theses and Dissertations
(and i can’t stress this enough) in my mouth: Extradiegetic Affect as Material is a non-linear exploration into the structures of feeling that exist in relation to cinema in its role as a technology for generating subjectivity. In the development of this research, a proposal of cinema’s likeness to the ecological circulation of microplastics is drawn in order to illustrate cinema’s materiality and nearly invisible ubiquity. The notion of extradiegetic affect is outlined as a post-cinematic condition in which lived experience becomes secondary to cinematic representation and which, simultaneously, becomes directly shaped by engaging with these representations.